"Cter."

How could it have happened?

"Cter."

It had just been a day or so.

"Cter."

Just been a day of Sund refusing to come out of the house.

"Cter!"

Why was he so quiet?

"Cter!"

Where was his–

"CTER!"

The sweat-drenched Monster Mage shot her head up to the mustached man she had rushed up Clinic Hill with. His breathing was just as exhausted and coarse as hers was, but his work had just begun. "We'll do everything we can."

Everything they could…

But nothing that she could.

"I don't know what is happening to you magically, Cter, but I can see that the monster nurses are shivering with fear. If it's your aura then I have to insist that you leave so that Sund has the best chances of surviving." The orange necklace that had swung violently around the human's neck was slammed into Cter's vacant hand. "Hold this too!" The weak hand clutched at the faint sense of Idyll.

Why did Cter have to leave? Was it her aura? Was it hers that flared like a roar of fear and uncertainty? Her aura that touched at every nook of the three-storied house as if trying to break out through the walls and ceiling? Her aura that had the monsters drowning in her confused and terrified emotions?

She looked down to her sleeved arm glowing with a bitter pulsing to it, choking on its coarse breathing the same as she was. The spiraling lines looked to tighten harder and harder around her arm with each passing moment that fluttered her by without her acknowledging that they did.

"Is it my aura?" dripped from Cter's mouth without her realizing it. Her furrow hardened as she tried to feel. With rapid blinks, she angled her head up again to meet the steeled eyes of the doctor who had confirmed her worst fears. "Is it?"

"It is," said the doctor. "You have to leave and let us do our work, Cter. We can't do it when you're here. Please understand."

Understand?

How could Cter understand?

How? How!

Sund! The state he was when Cter and Sarbor found him was–

"CTER!"

Through watery eyes the Fourth Monster Mage pleaded with the doctor, but before she could get a single word out from her choking throat, Sarbor squeezed her shoulder with his large hand. "You have to leave," he again stated with complete fact and nothing else. Behind him some of the monsters struggled with rummaging through some cupboards, looking desperately. "You can't be here right now. Sund is only human now, and for that he needs to be with us, okay?"

Y...Yes…

"Go outside and wait at the fountain, Monster Mage."

O-Of...Of course.

"We'll save him."

That a promise?

"We need warm water and surgery tools quickly!"

Was that a promise, Sarbor?

"Keep Dr. Sallus and me informed about Sund's condition while we prepare the main room!"

Sarbor?

"Cyanne, you're with me!"

Sar…

Cter, in all her royal garment and magical splendor worthy of that of the Royal Court at Jarasevo Castle, stood with her arm outreached like a child grabbing for something they only imagined existed. Her long, loose hair was matted to her cheeks and forehead, solidifying with sweat that poured from her like a melting glacier. The busy movement from the handful of monster nurses rolling carts and carrying supplies into the large room just after the wide hallway blurred before the Monster Mage. The colors, shapes, horns, tentacles, fur, scales, and bones flickered in and out of her water-distorted vision, with only her unstable aura giving her a sense of awareness, helped by her best friend's presence clutched in her naked hand.

She told Cter to leave as well.

The monster nurses all scrambled underneath the crushing pressure of Cter's aura. It was almost like trying to move through honey for them, as with each step they entered a different splotch of confusion and fear that the Monster Mage radiated stronger than the early evening Xoff sun peeking through the many windows in the house. Despite the crushing pressure, the monster nurses all kept going, with none succumbing to the emotional pressure.

They must have been just as steeled as Sarbor was.

It gave Cter trust, however insignificant it felt in comparison to the terror which she had coursing through her mind and soul. Just enough that she understood that she had to retract her aura and keep it to herself. She had to, or else those that wanted to help would not be able to.

Cter was a Monster Mage, but she was the last thing anyone in the three-storied house needed.

Especially Sund.

"I'll be back when you're feeling better."

Her colleague.

"I'll be back in a minute, Sund."

Her friend.

"Take care."

The doors which had opened so easily when Cter and Sarbor rushed into the three-storied house were heavy as Cter put her hand on them to make her exit. She pushed, but the doors wouldn't give. With Sund's pale body on a magically conjured stretcher held in the air with stasis magic they had swung open right away after Sarbor had yelled priorities across the gravel courtyard.

So why didn't it open when Cter wanted to exit? She didn't understand.

She didn't understand anything...

"Allow me, Monster Mage," offered the teal-colored monster with the curly horns and cross-shaped eyes who had helped Cter with her bleeding ears. The monster pushed down on the door handle and swung it open enough that Cter's foot could hold it open. Immediately afterwards, before Cter could even express her thanks, the monster rushed over to Sarbor awaiting with hurried beckoning of his exhausted hand.

"You promise, Sarbor?" came a whisper from the Fourth Monster Mage's tired lips for no one to hear, not even herself. The commotion in and out of the swinging doors of the large room, where somewhere inside Sund laid, had accelerated to a constant ingress and egress of monsters carrying everything from weathered buckets to bottles of medicine. They did it so easily. Went through and back out the doors so easily without any trouble, yet Cter, the Fourth Monster Mage, could not even egress through the door that was opened for her.

She had to leave though. She had to leave so that Sund could survive. So that he could be treated with human medicine, and not magical healing. Cter had tried, it was her first reaction to when she saw the state he was in while laid that filthy bed surrounded by foul and vile. He didn't look like himself. There was no...life...in him. No dents forming in his cheeks from his non-existent smile, and no innocence in his deflated shoulders tucked in with pain and sick.

Cter almost lost control of her magical protection against the miasma which had been locked in by Sund's barrier magic as she began to throw herself closer to reach with her healing magic, only to be grabbed by her shoulder and tugged back by Sarbor. For a brief moment she thought of him as an enemy, but as she saw the concern flush in his eyes that animosity from being denied to help her friend drained away only to be replaced by the realization that Sund was further gone than she had ever imagined.

What she could only have imagined, for he looked hollow. Not only his closed eyes, but his everything. Dried, thin, and sunken. Had it not been for his aura Cter would have thought that he was...

That he was…

No!

No! No he was not!

His aura was still present all the way through Clinic Village inside the carriage and up Clinic Hill on the magical stretcher! Cter still felt it when she entered the three-storied building. She still felt it when Sarbor began yelling commands!

And she was still feeling Sund's aura as she stood in the ajar door leading out of the house!

Sund was still alive!

So why…

So why couldn't Cter just leave? Why couldn't she just trust enough that Sarbor and Dr. Sallus and the monster nurses would save him? She could still feel his aura! She knew that he was alive! If he had an aura then he was alive!

So why!

Why!

Cter didn't understand!

She had healed Sund with healing magic all the way up Clinic Hill. She ran up it with healing, conjuration, and stasis magic all summoned at the same time to make sure he got to Dr. Sallus as quickly as possible. Her mouth had begun tasting of copper halfway up, yet she didn't falter. As she coughed into her sleeve when Sarbor and her reached inside Dr. Sallus' house she saw blood staining her magical lines.

Cter had done her dute. She knew that. She knew as well that she could not do anything more. That magic wasn't in the equation for Sund no longer. He needed medicine and a doctor, and neither Cter could provide.

She knew that!

But it wasn't what she felt!

Although…

What was it she felt?

She didn't know.

Nor would she know if she stayed inside the three-storied house and made it worse for the monster nurses, and perhaps even Dr. Sallus himself.

"Leave," Cter said to herself. "You've stalled for long enough."

Hearing herself give the order was what finally got her to widen the door enough so that she could step out of the commotion-filled house and into the warm outside where the Xoff sun leaned out from behind the angled roof to see how she was feeling.

Not great, Xoff sun. Cter wasn't feeling great at all.

She wasn't feeling at all, even.

All of that aura which she had let thrash around her made her restless when all bottled up inside of her, slamming at the walls of her soul. She wanted to run to try and relieve herself of some of the restless energy, but her legs could barely carry her down the few steps down to the gravely courtyard. Dents from her and Sarbor's hurried sprint dotted scoops of flung-away gravel that laid sprinkled on the intended paths like un-melt hail. Intended for those visiting on their own terms, perhaps, but not for those that visited on terms less...controlled.

The hail-like gravel rolled back into their lakes as Cter brushed her tired steps on the sprinkled-upon path leading from the three-storied house to the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. The white of the path turned gray briefly as the wind changed and the smoke from the churning brick buildings shifted in front of the sun. Gray enough that it was difficult to see where the intended path began and ended, with Cter almost slipping off the edge after an ill-placed step. She had made so many and in such a rapid succession up Clinic Hill without slipping once, so it was no wonder that she almost tripped herself once things had drained so much from her.

Once at the fountain Cter collapsed onto the provided seating with her head in her hands before either her hair or her mantle could settle. It was heavy, enough to angle Cter's wrists back enough to hurt. The orange necklace fell out of her hand, dangling from its chain being caught on her fingers, hanging. Idyll's comforting presence became distant, and what little help it had given Cter disappeared with her forlorn exhale.

"Sund..." the Fourth Monster Mage spoke solemnly between her palms. She wanted to cry, yet she didn't have the strength to. It was all she could do but breathe painfully in quiet with only the sound of the gently pouring water down the fountain's stone heart to keep her company. The restlessness inside of her didn't give her a chance to find how she wanted to feel.

It kept tugging her like a rag doll between feeling angry, devastated, unjust, betrayed, confused, terrified, and doubtful. As soon as she felt that something was beginning to form, that she began to feel something distinct rather than the unfocused vortex of tumultuous emotions, the restlessness in her soul and heart refused to acknowledge the emotion, and discarded it back into the vortex for Cter to pick another one.

Then again.

And again.

And again.

Until the spiraling lines on her hand were flush with battling colors all fighting without purpose or understanding as to why. Like a painter's cabinet smashed onto the floor the colors touched and averted at the same time, both blending in and separating as they lumbered over and under the other. From outside it was a mesmerizing display of color and magic, but from inside it was the complete opposite.

Cter wanted to have hope. She wanted to sit and just wait and listen to the gentle pouring of the stone fountain. She wanted to have trust in Dr. Sallus, Sarbor, and all the nurses that hurried into the large room with Sund.

Yet she couldn't.

There was something among the vortex of emotions inside of her that didn't budge. Something that resisted the turbulence inside of her. A part of her that was stable and could potentially give her enough stability to make something out of the undisciplined mess inside of her. Maybe it was what all the other emotions were tumbling around? Perhaps it was what all of her emotions were trying to get away from so that she could see it properly?

The one fact that she knew.

Knew, but refused to let take root within her.

For if Cter did it would have smothered the hope that she so desperately tried to cling onto. It would have made everything she had done meaningless. It would have crushed her underneath the weight implied from it.

"But his aura..." she spoke as a retort while her fingers curled over her face. "His aura is still there."

Sund was able to keep his barricade magic as close to permanent as possible when Cter and Sarbor found him. His barricade magic still put up resistance as Cter forced it open with her crystal magic by hooking through with a thin piece of crystal and then expanding it to make a hole in the barricade magic. In the barricade magic that was still kept active even as Sund laid unconscious.

It wasn't permanent magic. Sund hadn't managed that, so it meant that he was still actively trying to keep others away from his sickness as he fell unconscious. His sleeve was glowing as Cter and Sarbor rushed him up Clinic Hill which too indicated that there was still magic active within him.

There was so much proof to the contrary which Cter felt was true!

So why did she still feel that it was true?

Why was it the part of her that didn't feel confused? That didn't feel restless and hazy? The part of her that was the safe harbor in the storm?

She didn't know.

She didn't understand.

And the restlessness grew.

It grew and grew like an expanding dough without anything or anyone to pat it down. Cter wanted to scream, but what would she scream? What would she yell at the top of her lungs? How could she yell too? She could not even make sounds from her choked throat! There was nothing she could do, which tore at her soul.

Cter had left Sund in the three-storied house without offering her help. Without insisting that she could indeed be useful. She did not argue that she, a Monster Mage, could be of assistance to help another Monster Mage. She knew that there was nothing she could have done, and that arguing would have just kept Sarbor and Dr. Sallus away from Sund and would just be a waste of their time that they could have spent actually helping Sund, but…

But…

But it would have been something, right? Maybe...maybe Sund would have felt it in his aura that Cter was trying everything to help him? Since she just up and left without arguing, did he think of it as her betraying and leaving him? Was he afraid with so many strangers around him during such a critical moment? Did he need her to be close? To maybe not hold his hand, but to hold his aura? To let him know that she was still there and that she wasn't gonna leave him?

Cter's legs didn't let her stand up though. There was no strength inside them. Even if there were, the turbulence inside of her soul and mind didn't let the order through. Cter's legs were only weights stuck onto her hips to hold her balance sitting up. A pair of knees for her to rest her elbows on as she tried to weep. They had carried her up Clinic Hill faster than they should ever have done, and because of that they too refused to listen to her. They refused to move.

Because they knew what Cter refused to admit.

Her inner strife even reached her hair, with strands her loose right side falling down and brushing against her cheek seemingly at random. The wind had calmed down, so it wasn't because of that. Cter couldn't let loose a single sigh, however small or heavy, so it wasn't due to that. Her hair just...fell over. It was tired the same way she was. However, as her hair brushed at her cheek, it also let her know that things were happening towards the house. There had been subtle eyes and hushed murmurs from the brick buildings, but those had only brushed Cter by softer than the loose strands falling down her cheek. From the three-storied house something tickled at her.

Painfully.

The tickling had Cter peeking out from her hands to see. First she brushed back her hair back behind her ear, and secondly she straightened her back to allow herself to look more carefully. Something was different, that she could sense even through the watery distortion in her vision. After drying her eyes with her mantle she tried again to look carefully at what it could be that was different.

Unfortunately the wind began picking up again, which caused the stacks of smoke to wave across the sun, casting and unveiling the three-storied house in shadowy gray too quickly for Cter to discern what it was that was different about it. Anyone else would have just dismissed it as a mirage or just a streak of blur from her having pushed her palms against her eyes.

However though, it was not just Cter's eyes that sensed something different.

Her soul did too.

Well...not something different, but something that was the same differently. Like with how the house looked it was hard for Cter to discern exactly why she thought that it was different, yet it was. A difference that was the same, yet the same differently than the normal same.

She stood up with a curious, almost-perplexed tilt to her head that she could not straighten. Her legs which had just been weights just a moment before carried her and her feeling of being perplexed back over the sprinkled gravel pebbles without any and all risk of tripping.

As Cter retraced her steps along the intended path, the doors swung open from the inside, pausing her in her step. Like a wayward rock in the middle of a stream the monster nurses poured out the doors and around her, all averting their eyes from Cter. Even if they didn't look at her directly though there was something that all the monsters shared.

All monsters.

Including her.

The same differently similar middle-distance stare that Cter wore the monster nurses wore as well, painting the same unsure, almost contradictory mellow in their aura as they all figured how to actually feel about the so similar, yet so different, permeating from within the three-storied house.

Following the monsters out the doors were Sarbor, who quickly spotted Cter standing loosely in the middle of the rapid river of forked-flowing monsters. She didn't see him at first as her head was tilted slightly down, but as he closed in his walk to her she saw his black pants which her sight ran up from until she met his softened eyes. "Cter," he spoke even softer. "Dr. Sallus needs to talk with you in private." His tone was similarly thoughtful as the monsters auras, however there was a slight sense of otherworldly to it, as if he didn't believe his own words. A human equivalent to what the monsters auras experienced.

"How so?" replied Cter instinctively. She blinked, but it did naught to make any more sense of the situation. "How is Sund?" Still alive, clearly. His aura Cter still felt. "Did you cure him?" There was no real thought to Cter's questions, only instinctive extensions to the conversation.

"Dr. Sallus will answer that better than I can." The human doctor gestured carefully at the necklace hanging loosely in her hand. "Here, I'll hold it for you." She handed it over without any thought moving her arm and hand to do so.

Before Cter could ask more, Sarbor then motioned inside the house. She followed as if destined to, with no more questions. It was not only his inviting gesture that beckoned her inside, but also the strange sensation. If Sarbor was gonna make an offer for Cter to get closer to it she wasn't gonna deny it. She entered through the door Sarbor held open for her. As soon as she managed one foot inside, she stopped.

For she realized what she had caught in the corner of her eye from inside the three-storied house.

"It's brighter," she said while looking around in the hallway. It was brighter than when she left. Sure, the sun had changed position, but it had only begun to set and not-yet-reached low enough to pour in more light directly through the windows. To boot, it wasn't an orange bright from a sunset. It was a more yellowy bright, like a freshly lit candle. Much brighter than just one candle though, as well as a lantern. It didn't flicker either. It breathed rhythmically, brightening and dimming with regular intervals similar to clouds passing by across the sun.

Even brighter too was the sense of Sund's aura that felt strong to Cter. Strong and alive!

Oh what a relief it was!

Sund's aura was just as bright as the yellow, breathing tint that bathed the hallway.

Cter took a step towards the large room and–

"Wait."

A large, hurried hand, borderline desperate, grabbed hold of Cter's shoulder hard with a tug back to stop her from taking another step. It hurt, but confused more. Cter looked over her grabbed shoulder to see Sarbor looking over her and into the blurry glass of the large room where Sund was. His stare was unblinking and nervous, without any recognition of how hard he had grabbed at Cter's shoulder.

Wait?

Why wait?

Her tilt up to ask Sarbor was interrupted by the slow, heavy effort of Dr. Sallus opening the door to the large room. "Cter," he addressed through grimaces and strange bends of his ears. "Please...enter." He had difficulties collecting himself, and almost slid his furry hand off from supporting himself on the opened door with the blurry glass.

"Sir," coughed Sarbor with another tug on Cter's shoulder. "I can take it from here if it's too much for you. Please, let me–"

"No, Sarbor," Dr. Sallus retorted with a harsh shake to his head to get control back over it. "This is as well as I am going to manage with this, and it'll have to do." Once his ears stood up again he flicked his head up to Cter. His eyes were hard, more serious than anything Cter had ever seen. Not even Sir Gerson's eyes had been so steeled before. "Cter, please follow me."

After a tensed squeeze Sarbor let go of Cter. "I'll be outside here, sir." His hand fell off her shoulder tiredly. "Just call for me whenever, okay?"

"I will, Sarbor. Thank you. Before I do though, please make sure that the nurses are okay."

The two had talked over Cter as if she was a child, yet she did not feel as if they were being condescending towards her. If anything, the way they spoke hinted at them wanting to protect her.

From what though?

With her shoulder freed Cter walked over towards Dr. Sallus who's face was still furrowing and twisting without his permission. He controlled it as best as he could, but they were still like violent ticks as Cter placed her hand on the blurry glass to hold the door up instead of Bonny keeping it opened.

The yellow tint was even brighter inside the large room.

"Sund's condition was dire from the moment you saw him," began the monster doctor while he walked over the cold tile floor over to a separating blind in the middle of the room. Behind it the yellow was even stronger. Cter could not make out the form of it though, or what the source was. "You brought him up here as quick as you could, and there was no way you could have known that his condition would deteriorate so quickly. I've seen it before, the lack of hope in a human making the sickness the body carries worse. It's...what I always feared would happen to Kurant."

...Why was Dr. Sallus prefacing like that…

"I don't know what words to use as my soul is drowning within the strong aura here. So please, come and follow me, Cter."

Yes, Sund's aura. It was his aura that was dense inside the large room furnished with medical instruments and tossed-aside shelves on wheels. Why didn't Bonny say that the aura was Sund's when it clearly was?

"It's best that I show you instead, but first I have to tell you."

As Dr. Sallus grabbed the edge of the cloth divider, Cter noticed the silhouette that laid still on a table just underneath the source of the bright yellow. A distinct shape that was unmistakable, even if it was not moving.

"Sund is dead, Cter."

B...But…

"That is not what I can not explain with words though."

H...His aura… It's still…

"Brace yourself, Monster Mage. Brace against something not even you can understand."

Against...what?

With a painful pull, Dr. Sallus threw aside the dividing veil to expose the source of the brightly yellow. The sight of which had Cter stumbling back until she slammed into a metallic shelf filled with medical tools. She didn't scream, for how could she? To scream one would have to understand that one was afraid. What Cter saw… What was hovering gently above Sund, glowing yellow as the strongest of candles, was not something she understood.

Yet she knew exactly what it was.

The same shape that adorned the earrings underneath the white fabric covering Sund's body.

And above it…

"This is Sund, Cter."

He floated.

"This is Sund's soul."